Redeem the Bear (Bear Valley Shifters #5)(25)

“Thank you, but no. I’m fine.” That and her bear would eat her from the inside out if she tried pain medicine again. The first week after the battle had been traumatizing to her animal side. Now she only used a balm Anya had given her before she slipped into bed each night.

“Okay.” Marta’s frown deepened. “Phone call in the back for you, hon.”

“For me?”

“Yep.” She winged up her eyebrows as if she were just as shocked as Corin, then began to refill a row of empty napkin holders on the counter.

Crap. Riker was the only one who had ever called this place, and that was to tell her to get her ass back to Bear Valley when Brooks had declared war. This was bad.

Wiping her hands on the frilly white apron over her red checkered server dress, she padded down the back hallway, past the pictures of past employee awards and drawings the owners daughter had colored of the restaurant when she was a child. Past the small, one-stall bathroom and to the door of the office.

The phone sat on the desk, its old cord coiled like an earthworm after a downpour.

“Hello?” she breathed into the mouthpiece as she sank into the rickety old office chair.

No one answered and she frowned and tried again. “Is anyone there?”

Silence.

Biting her lip, she pulled it away from her ear to slide it back into the cradle.

“Don’t hang up,” a deep voice said from the other end.

Her heart thumped erratically in her chest, and she hesitated before she pulled it back to her ear.

“I just…I just needed to hear your voice,” Brooks said.

“H-how did you get this number?”

“Riker.” His voice was a low rumble and she imagined his eyes were bright silver. “You don’t have a cell phone.”

“I don’t have money for one,” she admitted.

“I should’ve called before now.” There was an edge to his voice. Something dark, like pain.

“Are you hurt?”

“Things have been hard here. Chaotic. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t know what to say.”

He hadn’t answered her question.

He was in Wyoming, with his people, and the distance seemed even greater somehow, hearing his voice surrounded by the static of the old phone.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“I want to talk. To be friends.”

“Friends.” The word sounded harsher than she’d intended. “I called you.”

“I know.”

“I called you ten times and your people said you didn’t want to talk to me.” She lowered her voice. “A friend wouldn’t sleep with me, then save my life, then ignore me until I felt like nothing to them.” All of the anger and resentment from feeling abandoned crashed over her like ocean waves, and her throat closed with the tide of emotion that was overwhelming her. “I love you but you can’t return that, so where does that leave us?”

“It leaves us at the beginning.” He hissed like he’d moved too fast and something had wounded him. “I can’t be what you want or need, Corin. I’m not right for you, but I can’t stop thinking about you. About kissing you.”

“Oh, the one where you bit my lip? Or is it the one where you pretended to be a gentle man when we slept together the first time?”

“No. I keep thinking about the first one.”

Her breath caught and she stopped rocking back and forth in the spinning office chair.

His voice sounded careful when he said, “The one in the woods outside of your parents’ house. The one ten years ago, when the Long Claws attacked our people.”

Our people. “Do you remember everything?”

“No. Just bits and pieces. I remember I had been working up to kissing you for weeks and you beat me to it.”

Her voice dipped to a ragged whisper. “You declared war on my people. Innocent shifters died because you were too stubborn to stop it. Riker said the Long Claws killed off most of the surviving Kodiaks, just to take their land. That you fought them. Our people fell at your hand. What happened to you to make you forsake your humanity?”

Brooks was quiet for so long, she began to consider that he’d set the phone down and left. She licked her lips, wetting them to repeat her question. The answer mattered. “Daniel—”

“Don’t call me that.” His voice sounded strained, like he’d said it through gritted teeth. “I’ll call you again.” The line went dead and a dial tone blasted against her sensitive ear drum.

Okay, he wanted to talk to her again, but when? She stared at the shift schedule on eye-scorching yellow construction paper, drawn in red permanent marker, and pinned to the office bulletin board. He couldn’t know when she worked next to call her here. Maybe he was just saying that to take the sting off of him preparing to ignore her again.

The phone was old and didn’t have caller ID. Setting it back into the sling, she frowned at a mug of mismatched pens and gritted her teeth. She couldn’t read him. Maybe hurt, maybe just angry. Definitely conflicted on whether she was worth his time or not. Bitter, confused…cold. Still cold.

Whatever change she’d seen in him when he stitched her up hadn’t held.

His time with the Long Claws only made him dark again.